Awakening Wednesday — Aroma or Stench?

The old adage is that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder‘. What I may think of as beautiful may be butt-ugly in the opinion of my son (almost guaranteed!). Take architecture, for example: A great many people are devoted to the Bauhaus school of

Aroma is in the Schnoz of the Beholder. 'Fragrance' to this critter's delicate nose may be 'Stench' to you.

modernist design originated with Walter Gropius in post-WWI Germany — simple, clean lines; whereas I’m fascinated by a form of Victorian architecture known as the Wretched Excess school — if one of something is good, then more is better — if you’re going to need a roof, then why not add two or three cupolas, a widow’s walk and a couple of gargoyles?

The great 19th century architect of skyscrapers, Louis Sullivan, promoted an overriding precept to architectural design: “Form follows function“: The shape of the structure should be determined by the structure’s intended use or function. The shape of a skyscraper should be vertical if you’re going to accommodate a very large number of office workers on a small plot of very valuable land.

In creating Awakening’s aromas, we took a page from the “form follows function” book. We went after the healing attributes of our aroma-bearing ingredients rather than after the aromas in and of themselves. Say what?

For example, we concocted the aroma base for Awakening HANDS to include ingredients that would prevent the growth of disease-causing organisms — in other words, something that would be antiseptic. In addition, we wanted ingredients that would suppress the itch response — in this case, astringents. What’s more, we wanted only natural substances derived from botanical versus animal sources. Consequently, we ended up formulating HANDS with the ancient antiseptic, myrrh, plus two natural astringents, ginger and cinnamon. Those were the two ‘functions” we were after. The resulting “form” — in this case, the “aroma” — was whatever came out of the process. In the case of HANDS, we were really fortunate that all three aroma ingredients produced a natural fragrance that is considered pleasant by about 98% of our customers. The inspiration for the ingredient combination in HANDS originated with my ex-cousin-in-law, Jon Eivers, as much as I would prefer to claim credit myself!

Even so, I did refine the mix — especially after one notriously vile batch of hand cream evaded the entirety of our quality control procedures and ended up on the U.S. market with an aroma comparable only to that of pig urine. To our customers who still remember this olfactic atrocity, I continue to offer my personal apologies! (The hand therapy still worked in awesome ways even if it did stink to high heaven).

Then again, the aroma of Awakening FEET is top-noted with lemongrass with undercurrents of orange, eucalyptus, peppermint and menthol. Given that FEET — before we added the lemongrasss — had found a very early market with reflexologists and massage therapists in Florida thanks to the efforts of a petite lady with hands of steel, Bette Gibson CMT, we quickly discovered that our original foot balm formula (again, without the lemongrass but with lots and lots of very volatile, very costly, very therapeutic essential oils) when applied to hot, sweaty feet in very humid, summertime Floridian conditions was causing reflexologists to keel over and drop like flies from the foot stink fumes! Kind of comparable to the fragrance that results from placing a head of cabbage in the trunk of your car for a 3-week trip across Texas during an August heatwave. So we added the lemongrass, and voila’, ‘problem solved‘!

The next time you purchase any Awakening product, just remember that you’re purchasing the successful end result of some very painful R&D experiences! But the end result is awesome. Because we absolutely refuse to test Awakening products on animals, this is why our friends & family are so important to us.

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Awakening Mineral Skin Care is a boutique formulator of natural, vegan skin care products utilizing concentrated mineral crystals isolated from the Dead Sea, essential oils and botanical extracts. With only a few exceptions, we call our products by what they do: Awakening HANDS treats hands, Awakening FEET treats feet, Awakening BODY treats bodies, Awakening SCALP treats scalps — you get the idea. However Awakening MUDFace is mud for the face (and feet!) — so, as with 9th grade English, there are always exceptions to every rule!

Just want to introduce myself: I’m Rob Hardwicke, the President and Product Master of Awakening Skin Care. The goal of this blog is to be a participatory voice on issues that affect us all when it comes to skin care.
All of us have skin (a profound observation!). All of us are living longer and longer (or at least some of us). Therefore, since we’ll be occupying this skin of ours for a good many years, we might as well make the most of it. This means taking care of our skin. READ MORE ABOUT ROB HARDWICKE